Follow the Stars

Created in Cinema 4D, this campaign included a competition to win a trip for 2 to Cannes Film Festival. Given the stars theme, I suggested we use the tagline “follow the stars”. This has the dual meaning of following the logo stars throughout the promo, and mingling with movie stars on the red carpet in Cannes.

The background is a combination of a Cinema 4D Floor object, lit using a large soft box from Greyscale Gorilla’s excellent HDR lighting kit, and Background object with a gradient texture from black to dark orange. The stars in the sky were created using a Star spline, the MoGraph Cloner Object and Random Effector, with a Plain Effector (-1 Scale,with Falloff) to clear stars away from the text and logos.

The extruded stars were created using MoGraph Spline Wrap. This was far more flexible than a using a Sweep Nurb along a spline, and allowed me to animate the Offset of the Star extrude rather than simply the Start and End points. Thanks to Tim Clapham for his expert guidance here. The particle trail is a Particle Emitter linked to the Spline Wrap Offset value using Set Driver/Driven and was set-up by Michael Tan, who assisted me with this project.

After Effects Rotobrush was used to do some quick roto work where the stars fly behind people. The shots aren’t perfect but with this tool I wouldn’t have even bothered given the tight deadline. The final project included 5 x 30 second spots and 2 x 60 seconds spots. The following example movies include the fully graphic 30 and a selection of shots from the other spots, and the fully graphic 30 with final audio mix.

Thanks everyone. I’ll post the finished audio mix soon. I did have sound for this but didn’t need it because the promo producer supplied an edited cut with stand-in graphics. I imported the edit into C4D and used that as the guide for timing. Best wishes, John.